


On Thin Ice

by Hikari_no_Chibi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2016, nerdrumple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikari_no_Chibi/pseuds/Hikari_no_Chibi
Summary: Belle and Rumple are Antarctic Researchers in this slice-of-life AU.  Happy Merry, NerdRumple! I was your Secret Santa all along.





	1. Day 1, February 6

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdrumple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdrumple/gifts).



Gold glared down at the puffy jacket and salopettes in his hands. They were colored for safety, an odd blend of day-glow orange and fire engine red, contrasting sharply with his black wool greatcoat.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” he growled.

The pilot rolled his eyes, and shoved a pair of massive, sound-cancelling earmuffs toward him, nudging a bulky pair of winterized boots with the huge toe of his own cleated footwear for good measure.  Gold’s sleek, Italian loafers were dwarfed by comparison.  

“Put them on.  I know it’s not technically winter yet, but it’s still kill-ya cold down there,” advised the man, who had introduced himself simply as Jefferson.  

“I think not.”  The words left Gold’s mouth unthinking, obstinate and reactionary in the face of good sense.

“You’ve got to wear the safety kit, it’s not optional.  There are gloves and a hat in the pockets.  I hope you packed some heavy sweaters in all those cases of yours; there’s a bit of a cold snap at the moment.”

It was February, in the Southern hemisphere.  He knew Antarctica would be cold, but it was still difficult to imagine, as he stood in the 20° C weather.  Gold eyed his hard-cased luggage.  His namesake color glistened in enamel, with the Dark Castle logo proudly stamped over each lid.  Of the thirty assorted containers being loaded into Jefferson’s aircraft, only one contained personal items and clothing -- cashmere and merino sweaters among them. Nothing like the thick wool jumpers and fishermen’s sweaters he saw in passing along the air strip.

“My, uh, expedition was a bit last-minute,” he confessed, easing the heavy coat on over his own clothes.  He toed off his shoes, sliding feet clad in cashmere socks into boots that were, indeed, a bit too big.

“Surprised you could secure a grant that fast,” joked the pilot.  His hair had that wind-swept look of carelessly disheveled peacocks everywhere, and Gold didn’t spare him a response.

Gold couldn’t help but notice that Jefferson’s uniform looked more like insulated dungarees and a flak jacket, with his pilot stripes displayed alongside a few, small patches of reflective safety tape.  Apparently it wasn’t required to look like the Great Pumpkin, just encouraged.  He sent a quick text asking Dove to arrange for additional supplies to be sent his way over the next few weeks, before the last planes left for winter. Nothing in orange this time, and with boots that fit.  That would be a start.

“You might as well turn that off now,” Jefferson carried on.  “They’ll have limited communication via satellite relay, but overall no service once we’re above the ice.”

Gold ignored him again, only grunting as he slid his phone into a deep, fleecy pocket.  A Dark Castle telecomm satellite should be on track to keep him relatively well-connected, as soon as it finished repositioning.  But this animated, talkative fly-boy didn’t need to know all that.

He slid on his earmuffs last, just as the twin propellers began to roar, and buckled himself into the jump-seat behind the pilot.  At least he had a few hours of blessed silence to—

“Roger-roger, tower, this is Juliete Lima Yankee requesting clearance for take-off,” interrupted the slightly static voice of Captain Jefferson, piped directly into his headset.  “Course is set from Christchurch to McMurdo, estimated flight time of 14 hours.”

Damn.

The plane took off, bumping over the New Zealand runway as it struggled to find purchase in the skies.

“Bit windy today,” said the pilot, over his headset.   “Might have some additional turbulence.  I hope you don’t get airsick!”

Gold could just hear the smirk on his lips as the plane lurched into the sky, dropping his stomach down to somewhere below his bollocks.  He gave the safety harness a preliminary tug for good measure, then gripped the edge of his seat.  Eyes shut, teeth clenched, and breathing deeply, he counted backwards from 100.  When he reached zero, he started again, until finally something like sleep (but with more anxiety) claimed him.

“Wakey-wakey,” crackled a loud voice in his ear.

Gold jolted back to awareness, somewhere around number 97.

“Look out the window, we’re approaching the landing strip!” encouraged Jefferson.

Despite his better judgement, Gold slid toward the edge of his chair and braved a glance out the frosty fuselage.  As far as the eye could see, the ocean stretched in all directions.  But ahead, it changed – transformed by icebergs and snow – into a broad band of white.  And beyond that, in the misty distance, Gold could just make out the subtle brown of rising mountains.  At the base of what could only be Mt. Erebus, a small village of mismatched buildings began to grow.

“I’m going to do a fly-by of the base on the left side,” said the other man, banking hard in the sky.

Gold tried to follow his line of sight, but couldn’t.  As the plane turned, it pointed him momentarily inland: white, barren hills and black, inky valleys as far as the eye could see.  It was impossibly vast, relentlessly pristine. If you journeyed out too far into that, you’d vanish for another 100 million years (or until the polar ice caps finally melted, which seemed more likely).

“Did you see it?”

Gold could only lie, nodding mutely as he rotated his bad ankle.  It hadn’t flared up lately, and barely bothered him anymore.  But it had been enough, when he was a young man, to permanently rule him out of the space program.  For a moment, he wondered if the astronauts were similarly overwhelmed by the huge emptiness of it all on their first trip to space.  He wondered if it might not be for the best that he had stayed in the control room.

As the plane touched down, the full weight of his decisions caught up to him.  On a lark, he’d begun researching optics again.  Dark Castle’s defense contracts were solid, as ever, and the patents he held kept the research grants he funded through his _alma mater_ , Miskatonic, flush with emerging developers (many of whom became Dark Castle recruits).  Ainsley Gold might not have made it into orbit, but he had parts on every manned and unmanned spacecraft launched in the last two decades.

This, though… Well, it was a theory to test.  And, because of the extremely limited number of telescopes focusing solely on dark energy for long periods (one of his key parameters), he’d had little choice but to run half way around the world, to Antarctica.  If he was right, and the Baelfire Effect could truly be proven, he’d be vindicated at last.  And if not, he already knew of half a dozen commercial and military applications for his new polymer that would pay for the months away from his desk ten-fold.  

As successful as he’d been commercially, Gold’s academic career hadn’t been much to write home about.  Of all his fellow postgrads, his was the only thesis not published.  It was the reason, in fact, why he remained _Mister_ Gold all these years later.  The would-be _Doctor_ Gold had packed it in and gone on to own a Forbes 500 corporation.  

Men of letters were nice, but men with dollars were better, as his ex-wife used to say.

They were almost laughably fast to approve his application, considering that he personally funded fully one eighth of all research and development happening on the US polar bases at any given moment.  One eighth was, perhaps, an underwhelming fraction; but when the receipts crept into tens of billions of dollars each year, it was a serious commitment.  Still, there was nothing for it. The Dry Valleys of Antarctica were the most geographically and ecologically similar places to Mars on the whole planet, and Mars was the future of the manned space program.

When Jefferson finally had the hatch open and gave the sign to disembark, the absolute terror was ebbing in favor of a fresh wave of optimism.  Porters dressed in coats that Gold was very relieved to realize matched his own swiftly unloaded his crates.  Beyond the icy landing strip, he could see a settlement the size of a small village, with dozens of buildings.  It resembled a shanty-town, to Gold’s eyes.  At least there would be something to look at other than the lens of his telescope.

A gust of wind caught him unawares, and Gold staggered under the extreme cold.  At 5° C, it was already colder than an average winter night in Maine.  And this was the _summer_.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” panned a snide, female voice from nearby.  

Gold swung on his heel toward the speaker, nearly overbalancing himself in his bulky boots.  She wore a familiar logo for Dark Castle over the breast of her coat.

“Ha ha,” he replied to his chief of Research & Development.  “Very funny, Dr. Mallory.”

“I’m serious, you know,” she huffed.  “You’re going to be based out of Danforth, not McMurdo.  The Polar Traverse is already carrying everything we sent ahead for you -- extra rations, that sort of thing.  It’s about two days away from the outpost, but we can get you there ahead of them via helicopter.  The rest of your equipment will fly out in a cargo plane later this week.”

And what, he’d spend a week waiting around for a delivery? Absolutely not.  He said as much, and Mallory made him a counter-offer:  “There’s nothing for it, Gold.  We can get you and a few essentials out tonight on the chopper, and the Traverse will deliver some creature comforts.  The rest is too heavy, and we’re expecting bad winds over the next few days.  You can fly out now, while it’s clear, or you can take the cargo plane at the end of the week.  That’s it.  Those are the options.  And trust me, you do not want to fly cargo-class.  

“Dammit, don’t look at me like I’ve just grown a third tit, Gold.  It’s not my fault you ran down here like lunatic before preparations could be made.  Nothing’s going to get you inland and working any faster than that.”

“I dislike being idle, Mal,” he said.  “You know that.”  

Anyway, the observational window was already opening.  In a month, he’d have to be up and running at maximum efficiency, otherwise he’d lose too much time establishing his control variables.  Maybe he could get the South Pole Telescope after all, instead of the much older Armitage-Rice-Morgan Telescope at Danforth.  How badly did the Department of Defense want those new GPS units?

“I can see you’re thinking ten steps ahead, as usual,” Mal teased.  “But seriously, I’d suggest boarding the chopper.  You can make it to Danforth by nightfall if you leave right now.  Get acquainted with the place, rest up.  The station manager there is an old pro, a real ice bitch.  Virginia Lucas... Christ, she was here in the 90s when they still used sled dogs.  She knows the run-down, but has been instructed not to say anything about your situation.”

“She knows I’m her ticket to bigger and better grants, you mean.”  He valued his privacy, avoiding the relative celebrity of the tech billionaires club.  Instead, Gold mostly stayed in his salmon-pink Victorian, far away from the hustle and bustle, in Maine.

Mal shrugged.

“Does it matter? She’s playing ball, scheduling your time with the equipment, and generally accommodating our every demand.  For a certain value of every,” she amended.  “I wouldn’t push it when it comes to safety protocol; if she says to get inside, you get inside.  They say she’s seen things, out on the ice.   Things no one’s ever survived seeing before.  Spooky!”

She grinned, wiggling her gloved fingers at his chin.

“I’m not interested in your ghost stories, Mallory.”

“God, you’re boring,” sighed the woman, leading him deftly toward an awaiting helicopter.  “Do me a favor and live a little while you’re down here.  I’m sure the board members are shitting themselves over what could happen with you in the field.  Might as well give them something to worry about.”

Gold rather suspected that they were beside themselves with joy, at the thought that his shares would finally go public if he died.  Cora would certainly be thrilled.

“You can load in one bag for ballast,” advised the helicopter pilot.  He was a thin, sallow man, pinched in the chest and lean in the face, with a jaw like sandpaper.  He looked every bit the weasel.

Gold looked longingly at his equipment.  There were more than a few pieces he loathed letting out of his sight, but self-interest (and weight restrictions) won out as he chose the bag with his clothes in it.

“Captain Nottingham will take excellent care of you,” Mallory shouted over the roar of the wind, as the hatch shut behind him.

A hand like a shovel clapped a pair of earmuffs on his head, this set with a microphone visible.

“You’ll love Danforth,” said the pilot as the engines whirred to life.  “It’s really wild, not like here where they’ve got everything but the kitchen sink hooked up via satellite.  You really feel like you’re at the bottom of the world out there, right on the edge, you know?”

“You don’t say?” Gold managed, his stomach dropping for the second time in 24 hours.

“Oh yeah,” grinned Nottingham as the chopper rose into the air. “And you would not believe what kind of high-quality tail they get out there.  Seriously, man. Seriously.  This place will make a Wisconsin 5 look like a California 9, but those Pabodie girls are _tight_.  God, what I wouldn’t do to bend one or two of them over and just rip them in half.  I mean, really, just pound it ‘til it snaps.  Can you imagine, man? Dude? You alright?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Gold said.  And he was.

Gold was too panicked during the flight to McMurdo to really appreciate the chill of Jefferson’s plane.  Now, holding a bag of his own sick and trapped inside a soup can, he couldn’t seem to get warm again.  The damp and warming spring only just emerging in Maine seemed lifetimes away.

Worse, it turned out that Mal’s promise of “Danforth by nightfall” came with a fairly big disclaimer: at this time of year, they only had a few hours of twilight each night, which  meant “nightfall” happened after midnight.


	2. Day 2, February 7

**Day 2, February 7**

After midnight, the sky had gone slightly pink, with touches of purple, for the first time in months.  It was getting darker every night, edging further into the variegated phases of twilight, but heavy cloud cover and a relentless work schedule had conspired against Belle’s ability to truly appreciate any of it.

Soon, after the last planes left at the end of the month, a few hours honest nighttime would herald the official start of winter.  They would lose light quickly after that, before entering a period of 24-hour darkness that stretched well into July.

It was that single, long night that Belle lived for – when the aurora and moon were her only competition for the darkest skies on earth.  The T3s and Winter-Over-Syndrome would kick in soon after that, but for a few, blessed weeks Belle could truly indulge herself in amateur astronomy.

The sound of a distant chopper heralded a late arrival, but she didn’t bother to turn around and look at it until the blades kicked up a thin layer of powder, like a snow globe.  Her curiosity waned when she realized that the pilot was none other than Keith Nottingham, the continent’s most persistent sex-pest.

A landing crew was already running out to meet them, but something in their response seemed off.  She headed toward the landing pad, just as the engines were cut.

“Do you need a medic?” she shouted across the safety line, toward the craft.  

One of the crewmen waved her forward, and Belle pulled herself up, into the cockpit of the helicopter.  Nottingham’s passenger was pale, painfully so, and clutching a bag of what could only be vomit.

“Bit of airsickness?” she asked, gauging his responsiveness.   He didn’t seem concussed or hypothermic, but nausea and sallowness were symptoms for pretty much every illness imaginable.

“You’re probably fine, but I’m only trained in first aid.  I’m going to radio Dr. Whale just to be safe.” 

He slapped the hand-held radio out of her hand when she tried to make good on that offer. 

“Hey!”

“I don’t bloody need a doctor,” the man snarled, a bit of color returning to his face.   “I need to get out of this damned tin can so I can bloody breathe again!”

Belle immediately backed off; it wouldn’t help anything to make him feel trapped.  She offered her hand to help him down, but he promptly ignored her and shambled down on only marginally wobbly legs.

“Gold?” a familiar voice asked from behind Belle.   

The man nodded, and Belle stepped aside to let the Station Manager move front-and-center.  Whoever this was, he had to be important to get Ginny, more affectionately called Granny – though never to her face, out to the helipad at quarter to midnight.

“With me, Gold.  We’ve got a lot to go over before I set you loose on Danforth.”  Granny’s tone brokered no arguments on the best of days, but she sounded positively murderous at the moment.

Belle hadn’t quite decided if she wanted to send the new-arrival off with a rude gesture or not when an arm wrapped over her shoulder from behind.

“Hey, sweetness, wanna go for a ride on my bird?” offered Keith, his breath sour against her nose.

“Get bent,” she groaned, pushing him off.  

He tumbled back theatrically, earning himself a round of laughter from the rest of the crew.

“Alright, alright,” he surrendered, making a huge production of getting back up.  “I know a losing fight when I see one.  Let me know if you ever get tired of sucking clam with the rest of the engineering girls.”  

And, because the world wasn’t fair, the ground crew laughed at that too.

Apart from being vulgar in the extreme, Keith Nottingham was not a bad pilot – a fact Belle only begrudgingly admitted under extreme duress.  He’d be a better one, as far as she was concerned, if somebody stapled his mouth shut.  But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he had brought an entire crate of freshies with him, offering her first pick by way of an apology.

That was Keith through and through: pushing it right to the line, looking over, and then backpedaling into weird-but-harmless territory.  

On the one hand, she would have been hard-pressed to isolate a single truly irredeemable trait in him, piggishness aside, and you had to fundamentally trust your team to survive down here.  But on the other hand, there were apples.  Big, fresh, red ones with hardly any soft spots.  It was incredibly difficult to muster up a serious reprimand in the face of such riches as these.

Belle grabbed the two most perfect apples she could see, and headed back to her room.

“So tell us about the new guy again,” demanded Ariel, slicing into the fruit Belle handed her.

“I already told you, he was pale as a ghost and in a terrible mood.  Snapped at me.… bit of a Scottish accent, or maybe Nova Scotian, but fairly Americanized.  Granny bundled him off to her office for a midnight orientation meeting.”  She licked the juice from her fingers, enjoying a late-night snack.  Second shift was hell on her sleep cycle, but a 1AM apple would set her to rights soon enough.

“There must be something else!”

Ariel Finns, the perpetually nosy (though more politely called curious) redhead, had arrived on a Pabodie Grant for Excellence in Engineering.  She would be flying home in a couple of days, her research a resounding success, and leaving Belle to winter in their room alone.  Predictably, Ariel had slathered her share of the apple in peanut butter and a thin scraping of her dwindling Nutella stash.

“There really wasn’t,” Belle insisted.  “Though I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to talk to him.  It sounds like he’ll be working in the Dyer Building with me, if the schedule drafts are anything to go by.  Somebody certainly has a lot of hours marked off in the data center.”

“Must be someone important, then,” Ariel surmised.  “You know how Dr. Anton feels about sharing his space.”

She winced.  Belle remembered quite acutely what had happened to the last person foolish enough to move one of the good doctor’s seed trays, IE herself.

“He’s only supposed to be testing algae and lichen samples,” she muttered.  “How was I supposed to know that his unlabeled soil samples piled all over my computers were actually bean plants?”

Ariel laughed, stuffing another glob of peanut butter into her mouth.  “I don’t get it either.  I mean,  _ beans _ ? Gross.”

Belle shushed her.  Ariel would happily spend her days eating nothing but corn chips and hot pockets, but what Belle needed – more than an apple – was an iced tea with a huge slice of lemon, and a greasy burger with more tomatoes than meat on the bun.  

She savored the unadorned fruit, its tang and crispness a welcome reprieve for her tongue.  The Traverse would bring their last supply of freshies for the year in the next day or so, then carry on toward the South Pole.  On the return journey, anyone who hadn’t already made the flight to McMurdo would say their final farewells and join the Traverse back home.  The winter staff at Danforth were about to be seriously, irrevocably alone.

“I’m on again at 14:00 hours,” sighed Belle, scraping her teeth along the core to suck the last of the apple’s taste into her mouth.  “I guess that means it’s time for bed.”

Ariel yawned.  “Alright, Bunkie.  Good night!”

They slept with blackout curtains in autumn, the few scant hours of twilight hardly enough to allow for a proper rest.  Even now, the sun was coming back up.  As winter progressed, they would approach something like a normal day-night cycle, but the weeks of total darkness would stretch well into September.

The next afternoon, when Belle made her way into work, she found a war zone by the water cooler.

“An animal,” groaned Anton.  “An absolute beast.  No respect at all for what we’re trying to do here, no business wintering over.  It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster, and his gear hasn’t even arrived yet.  Kicked me out of my own work station, can you believe it!?”

Belle’s eyes went wide.  “Is there something I need to know about?” 

“It’s that bastard, Gold,” the large man cursed. “I’ve got two more days to wrap-up my work before I fly out, and he just muscled into the lab and took over!”

“Alright, alright,” she pleaded.  “Let me go see what I can do to smooth this over.  Obviously he can’t requisition the whole lab for the next two days.  There are 20 functioning machines in there, more than enough processing power for everybody.”

Belle eased open the door to her office, glad of the extra-long, extra thick sweater that hung slightly over her fingers when she touched the cool metal of the handle.  Though it was certainly livable, it never really got warm inside.

Danforth base had three main buildings, all winterized and connected by a series of tunnels, with a few outlying summer structures and storm bunkers scattered through the perimeter.  It was funded in part through the US Antarctic research program, Dark Castle grants, and Miskatonic University.  

Belle spent most of her time split between two locations: the Dyer building, where she worked as a data architect  – her degree in Library Science pairing nicely with an Information Technologies background – and the Lake building, where everyone bunked and lived their day-to-day lives.  The third building, generally known as the Atwood Center, was actually involved in a long-term observational program that measured the various radiations and magnetic activities of the auroras; it was, to Belle’s knowledge, a theoretical physicist’s wet dream, and also the best-heated location on base.  She spared it a passing thought, wishing the Dyer Building would stay about 5 degrees warmer.

“Hello?” she called, opening the door.  Oddly, the overhead lights were out and the whole area was only dimly illuminated by a single computer screen in the back.

“I’m working!” snapped the same rough brogue she’d heard last night.

“Yes, I can see that.”   Belle flipped on the lights, triggering a long string of curses from the notorious  _ Gold _ as his eyes adjusted. “The question I have is: why isn’t anybody else able to work?”

She wanted to be cross with the man, and had made a good start.  But the sight of him wrapped in at least six inches of highland wool, three or more jumpers wedged under a tight-to-bursting wool suit coat, sent Belle into a fit of giggles before she could really get going.

“I’m to have unrestricted access to the resources here for the next 6 months,” he growled.  “Surely Mrs. Lucas informed you of the change?”

“Informed, yes,” nodded Belle.  “But unrestricted access and sole ownership are hardly the same things, are they? And we have people who will be leaving us soon who need access to these machines, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to share the space until the Traverse leaves.”

He looked up, eyes able to focus again, and focus they did: sharply, on Belle, as though she were a particularly annoying gnat.

“I need a quiet, dark space to prepare my equipment, calibrate my tools, and review my data,” he told her, changing tactics.  “If you can tell me how to achieve that with a bunch of bumbling, small-talking fools lumbering about the place, I’m all ears, dearie.”

“You could try the Gilman Tank,” she shot back, only half joking.

Gold’s look was blank.

“It’s an isolation tank that the Atwood physicists use to… you know what, never mind.  Dr. Gold—“

“ _ Mister _ Gold,” he corrected.

“Mr. Gold,” amended Belle.  “My name is Belle French, or Ms. French if you prefer.  We are going to be spending a lot of time together if you intent to utilize my machines all winter—“

“ _ Your _ machines?” he scoffed.

“ _ My _ machines,” she nodded.  “I am the administrator, and I will be wintering over to make sure we don’t suffer any huge server failures, breaches, or data-loss, as well as doing general organization and digitization of the literally thousands of pages of field notes that this station generates each summer.  Lab hours are going to cut from 24-hours to a measly 10 a day, and we’re both going to be cooped up in total darkness for a long time.  Am I being clear?”

“You’re threatening to annoy me out of the lab,” Gold concluded, without an ounce of humor.  “Despite knowing full well that while unrestricted access doesn’t mean sole ownership, it does mean that I will have innumerous opportunities to wake you up and demand accommodation.  Two can play at that game, dearie.”

“I’m not your dearie or your sweetie or anything else,” Belle bristled, still a bit annoyed over her interaction with Keith.  “I am the person who regulates these machines, and I am telling you that it’s time to share.  This isn’t like your university or office or whatever it is you’re used to, this is Antarctica.  If we don’t work together, people will die here.  Maybe it seems like wasted table space and noise to you, but Dr. Anton’s research here has huge implications for the renewable energy market, and Dr. Hua is working on an ecological study for ancient yeasts that haven’t been active since before Pangea broke apart.  

“On top of all that, there are people in the field who rely on these machines to provide correct and accurate feedback.  People who need our environmental readouts to make the weather report, before a 150 knot wind knocks out a tower.  Whatever attitude you brought with you, you need to drop it, because even in the 21 st Century, you can’t survive down here alone.”

“You’re suggesting that human interaction is a vital part of this experience,” he sneered.

Belle chose to ignore his tone.

“It’s a huge privilege and burden to be allowed to work here, and I need you to recognize that.  Wintering over is going to fundamentally change you, your brain chemistry, and your hormone balance.  The human physiology is simply not suited to living in total darkness, with only artificial lights.  You’ll become irritable and forgetful.  You’ll get tired, and probably a little depressed.  When the new recruits arrive at Winfly, you’re going to look at them like they’re aliens – intruders, who have no business barging into the social bonds that our primate minds form in isolated communities.  It’s not a weakness you can overcome; it’s a documented, scientific fact.  Working here is going to be hard enough as it is, so I need for us to find a way to be polite before we literally can’t.”

After a long pause, Gold conceded her point.  “I can manage to be polite.”

“Good, so we understand one another.  Now, I may be able to help you find a temporary place to calibrate your gear for the next few days while people finish up with what they’re doing in here.  What exactly are we dealing with?”

At that, Gold glared absolute daggers.  “My equipment is scheduled to arrive tomorrow on a cargo plane, and the rest of my things are on the SPORT.”

“Do you mean the SPOT?”

He nodded.

“OK,” said Belle, taking a deep breath.  “Well, as you haven’t got any actual equipment yet, I’m going to let the other scientists back in.”

Before he could argue, she leaned out into the hall. “Dr. Anton, Dr. Hua, you can come in now.”

The pair of microbiologists stepped in gingerly, sour looks on their faces.  Mulan, at least, looked reasonable; Anton, less so.  And Gold wasn’t alone in his assessment that the larger man was very loud.

She could see a rude remark brewing in two sets of brown eyes, and cut them both off at pass.  

“We are going to keep the noise down today, so that Mr. Gold can carry on with his set-up,” she announced, putting an end to any further arguments.  “And Mr. Gold, when you’re done here, you can come into my office and we can set up a schedule for the winter months.”

He seemed to be mulling this over, but whatever the correct ratio of carrot to stick was, Belle seemed to have found it.

“Very well,” he nodded.

And, blessedly, Dr, Hua had calmed down Anton with a well-timed gesture toward a promising slime sample.

Belle spent her day doing the thousand and one data back-ups that Anton and Hua would need to transport back to the States for further analysis, and as her 10-hour shift drew to a close, she was genuinely surprised to hear a gentle knock on her door.

“Come in!  Oh, Mr. Gold, sit down, sit down.  Can I get you a cup of tea or some instant coffee to warm up? The cold can be a bit intimidating when you’re new on the continent.”  

He still looked chilled, despite all the layers, and Belle had to wonder what he would do when the temperatures dropped to -40° C and the winds hit hurricane-force.  Not everyone was prepared to deal with an Antarctic winter, but everyone went through their own adjustment period, and Belle remembered that she’d scarcely left her room without a fleece blanket when she first arrived.  It wasn’t really any cooler inside than an air conditioned restaurant back home, but somehow knowing where you were made the chill stick around for ages.

“Tea would be acceptable,” managed Gold.

Belle plugged in the office kettle, a simple luxury that she and a few summer staff had schemed to piece into their luggage about 2 years ago.  Already, pieces had been replaced and repaired by Ariel and her friends over in Engineering – the thing saw daily use, to the point that Belle had seriously suggested to Granny that the base invest in a new one.

That went over like a lead balloon, but at least the kettle they did have still worked.  It was better than trying to use a beaker, or heaven forbid walking all the way back to the Lake cafeteria.

She chose a mug at random from the side-board and poured Gold a cuppa, dunking a cheap, Lipton bag over the rim.  If you didn’t want to run out of something  good, like tea, you needed very strict rationing.  Or else you had to settle for the cheapest, bulkiest variety available.  After a year of constant run-outs, they’d switched to the cheap stuff, which Granny bought-in by the crate.

He looked as bewildered by this as he had by everything else Belle threw his way, so she took pity on him and took the first sip.  Gold blew on his drink to cool it, then – thinking better of it – downed a large mouthful of the hot beverage all at once.

“This cup is chipped,” he said, once he’d swallowed.

“Sorry, I suppose it’s just a bit knocked about.  Most everything down here is, come to that.  Did you want another one?”

He shook his head, and took another sip from the chipped one.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Belle, “But it seems like you’re a bit overwhelmed.  Have you slept since you got here?  Have you eaten enough?  We can always have this conversation later if you need to take some time for yourself.”

Gold sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and spoke through shut eyes.  “I am… coping.  I was, perhaps, a bit difficult this morning.”

Ah, so that was it.  He’d made up his mind to apologize, and had now developed a severe allergy to the words.  Or perhaps he was just embarrassed.

“You’re forgiven.  Dr. Anton and Dr. Hua got their final reports today, and they will be packing the last of their gear tomorrow.  Which, consequently, is when your supplies are scheduled to arrive.  I checked the McMurdo weather report, and it sounds like the wind is holding for now, so I don’t see any reason why the Transport wouldn’t be on time.  It’s always a bit iffy navigating in the Shear Zone, but there’s no reason to expect delays.”

Gold swallowed all that with about the same grace he’d mustered for his tea.

“There’s really not much you’ll be able to do before the SPOT gets in, so take my advice and rest up.  If we have a weather emergency, it’ll be all-hands on deck, so you need to be well.  Eat, sleep, exercise.  Anything you can do to put yourself on a routine will help.”

On cue, her stomach rumbled.

“Well, that’s my call to supper.  Do you remember where the cafeteria is?  I’m headed there anyway, so you might as well come along.  We can talk about the schedule over tinned meat and frozen vegetables.”

Gold followed, more a lost dog than the snarling wolf he’d been earlier.

Honestly, the food wasn’t terrible.  It wasn’t fresh, and it wasn’t exciting, but it warmed you up and kept you running, and the kitchen staff had a range of experience from 3-star cuisine to merchant-marine fry cooks.  It was fine, but repetitive, fare.

“So what is it that you’re researching, exactly?” asked Belle over her bowl of vegetable soup. 

Gold had taken her advice and ladled up some of the same for himself, supplementing his tray with a hearty portion of bread and cheese.  They’d even made it in time for her to snag an apple apiece.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with astrophysics and the basic principles of modern spectroscopy….”

“Let’s assume not at all,” she conceded.  Belle was smart, very much so, but she was not a specialist in the way that most of the scientists on base were.  There was a divide, though it faded somewhat at winter, between the scientists and the staff.  She had useful skills to support the science teams, but couldn’t operate an L-band radiometer herself. “Although I do practice a bit of amateur astronomy up in the ARM Tower when the skies are right.”

“Ah, well, I’ll give you the summary, then.  I’ve developed a new polymer that mimics the basic premise of both the lens-magnification of a convex structure and the crystalline-refraction of a spectrometer.  It’s light-weight, low-cost alternative to the usual glass and mirror system, but it can also filter light at different points along the spectrum by adjusting a small current that passes through the semiconductive substrate.”

He looked at Belle expectantly, and she was careful to chew her bit of carrot to mush before responding. 

“That does sound very interesting, but why did you have to come to Antarctica to test a telescope?”

“Oh, the telescope works, dearie. Sorry, Belle.  Miss French,” he stammered.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. So, the telescope works.  So what are we going to be looking at with it?”

“We’re looking for Baelfire,” he grinned.


	3. Days 2 - 21, February 7-26

Beautiful though she was, after half an hour Gold had to begrudgingly admit that Belle French was not  secretly an astrophysical savant.   She understood the basics of spectroscopy – and how the bands of color corresponded to temperature, age and composition of a distant star – and she accepted that, soon, the next generation of telescopes would be able to gather atmospheric data for distant planets, searching for carbon-based life markers.  

What had rarely been tested – and certainly never with Gold’s new system – was the potential for latent markers around alleged dark energy clusters.  He’d already tested it on a dying star, its core long extinct, the final throes of its light barely visible from earth.  The results were promising -- energy thumbprints and radiation, yes, but so much more.  If he could point it at the right place… well, who knew what it might mean for science?  

It would prove he’d been right, 20 years ago, when he’d expounded on the Baelfire Effect.  His advisor had likened it to an aura, to crystals and charlantry, but he’d simply lacked the vision to imagine what might be possible if only humans could fundamentally change the eyes through which they observed the skies.

Dark energy, itself, was only just being explored down at the Amundsen-Scott Station, using the South Pole Telescope. Without major advancements, they wouldn’t have definitive results for years… but Dark Castle specialized in exactly those kinds of technological miracles.  

Gold would have access to the South Pole’s daily readouts all winter at Danforth, the base second-closest to the pole after Amundsen, and had coded a number of algorithms to search through their output with minimal delays.  He’d be analyzing their data faster than they could, if all went to plan.

Admittedly, it miffed him a bit that he hadn’t been able to secure the South Pole Telescope for exclusive use, but the adjustments he would have to make to the aperture were simply outside the realm of his influence.  Dark Castle owned a significantly larger share in the slightly less impressive Armitage-Rice-Morgan Telescope, and he made up the difference with a more than generous donation of rare texts to Orne Library, back in Arkham.  

But Belle seemed under the impression that he was some sort of late-life graduate student suffering from lack of sleep and low blood sugar, and Gold found that he liked the rapport it built over their lackluster lunch.  She didn’t need to know that his so-called funding was merely pocket change at this point.

Most people would have asked, or at least seriously hinted, at securing additional funding for themselves.  Usually it only took about 10 minutes, wherever he was recognized, for the open hands to show up.  But Miss French was completely focused on what she could do to help him: keeping the connection between Danforth and Amundsen being chief among them.

“I’m telling you right now, there will absolutely be black-outs. Maybe for several days at a time, depending on the wind and cloud-cover.  We’ll receive their output via satellite, so as long as the receivers and transmitters remain active, we can expect a medium-speed connection when the skies are clear.”  

They’d long since finished their soup, and had graduated to eating a pair of rather pale and lumpy scones, with more of the same tea she’d made in their office.  It was cheap, the leaves in the bag little more than dust.  But it brewed up strong, after a fashion, and it definitely had caffeine.  Gold could live with it.

“That presents something of a paradox,” he told her.  “If the skies aren’t clear, I can’t make my own observations.  In that case, it would be most beneficial if I had fresh data from another source, to compare.”

“But you won’t have that either, if there’s a bad storm,” she confirmed.  “And it’s going to take some pretty big lifting on my end to merge the tables so you can query both.  Never having seen this software you were telling me about, I can’t give an accurate estimate of how long it will take for the servers to run a daily merge.  We might be talking about a 2-3 relay and processing delay anyway, so hopefully the weather won’t bring us to a grinding halt once a week, with that backlog to get to.”

“As often as that?” 

He’d seriously no notion that the weather would be so bad.  Of course, he also hadn’t realized that he’d have to urinate into a yellow bottle in the event that the chemical toilets ruptured and froze.  But all the waste generated, including the human, had to be locked up and shipped out.  They were committed to causing as little permanent change to the continent as possible, and while that didn’t particularly appeal to Gold, he could reap the benefits of cold, clear skies with non-existent light pollution.

“Between the aurora, which can really ruin visibility, and the storms, which are so severe they’ve never actually been measured--”

Gold scoffed.

“I’m serious!” she laughed.  “Every time someone gets close to measuring the top wind speeds, their tools get knocked loose or destroyed.  They may not know if God can make a rock so big God can’t lift it, but we definitely know that Antarctica can make a storm so strong that whole generations of scientists can’t measure it.”

“And I imagine that, to a bunch of empiricists, that amounts to basically the same philosophical conundra,” he joked.

To Gold’s absolute delight, Belle laughed at his stupid joke.  It wasn’t even a joke, more just a disparaging remark.

Belle composed herself and said, “The good news is, we’re still about a month away from any significant periods of darkness.  We’ll have plenty of time to stress-test the system and organize our output between now and the prime observational period.”

“I’m still not sure how the prolonged exposure to extreme cold might affect the conductivity of the polymer over time,” he admitted.

“So sooner is better than later for a test-run,” she surmised.  “I think it would be best if I headed to the South Pole base on the Traverse, to make sure Anna has knows what’s going on.  If we can streamline the information transfer from both sides, it will minimize down-time.”

“Anna?”

“Anna Arendelle. She’s the data architect supporting the South Pole Telescope over the winter.  Her sister, Elsa, does is part of their astronomy department.”

“Doctor Elsa Arendelle I’ve heard of.”  She was a big reason why Gold hadn’t been able to secure the telescope for himself.

“Well, Anna is great,” Belle told him.  “And the two of them, together, are a dream team.  Took to the ice like you wouldn’t believe, and the meteorological and environmental research they did this summer with a set of weather balloons will probably make the cover of National Geographic.  I can probably secure a position on the SPOT, since I’ve worked the route before.  I’ll be gone for about two weeks, but one of the other architects will be able to handle any problems you encounter, and then we’ll have every advantage when it’s actually dark again.”

Gold nodded, and that seemed to be the end of it.  He and Miss French agreed to a rotating lab cycle, to maximize on the growing hours of twilight and eventual darkness.  When the full darkness rolled around, they would do a relatively typical 8-6 schedule, in some hopes of building a liveable routine into the unyielding night.  Then, when the sun rose again in September, they would wind-down the same way, shifting slightly to accommodate the faint blush of day.

The next day, his equipment arrived as scheduled, and Miss French departed for the South Pole without much more than a cursory nod to the grim-faced Virginia Lucas.  That was the last time anything happened on schedule.

He had his tools, but not the extra cold-weather gear promised by Mr. Dove.  What Mallory deemed “luxury goods” amounted to a few bars of chocolate and a bottle of scotch, singular.  Totally useless.  On the third day, his satellite feed cut out. Danforth was in uproar as the last of its summer staff loaded out via aircraft, the labs, warehouses, and storerooms each a tumult of industry and inventory, and a the center of it all was him: pushing the wrong way against the flow of a stampede.  

No one would help him.  Not that Ainsley could blame them in the least.  He was accustomed to a certain degree of deference, and the other admins and architects were nowhere near as forgiving as Miss French.  What incentive did either side have to make nice? They were leaving and he was staying, and Gold had been reasonably convinced that he could make do for himself.  

If you couldn’t carry on under your own steam, you had no business being where you were. Wherever it might be.  A long, hard life coming up from nothing ensured that, and he used to believe it.  But even in all his gear, he could barely stand to spend 15 minutes together outside, on the ice, and there simply weren’t resources to help him.

All the raving and shouting in the world was not enough to motivate a dribble of generosity, his reputation as the man who’d turned out the much-beloved doctors Anton and Hua preceding him like the plague.  

“Well what do you want me to do about it, Gold?” Mrs Lucas had demanded, only half listening in any case.

“Punish them, reprimand them, I don’t bloody care.  Tell them I’ll cut half their funding, if it comes to that, but I need assistance,” he’d shouted.

“Whatever you say.  I’ll threaten to send them all home, shall I? Except they’re all heading that way by the end of the week anyway.”  The old battleaxe had brushed him off.

“At least bring Miss French back,” he’d begged, after the start of the third week.

“She’ll return as soon as the weather clears, which is consequently when everyone else will be leaving us.  You can either figure it out on your own, as you insisted would be the case when you pushed your way into my program on 8 days’ notice, or you can pack up and leave with them.  We can’t spare the help.  These people have jobs, and they’re doing them.  Their jobs, blessedly, do not revolve around you.”

“Miss French said--”

“Belle is a better person than we deserve,” Mrs. Lucas interrupted. “Most especially you.   She’ll be back when she’s back, Gold.”

And that had been 4 days ago.  A month, he’d been in this frozen hell, and had absolutely nothing to show for it.  He knew technology inside and out -- half of what Danforth used was proprietary to his company -- and then there was the other half: ancient, upgraded and revisited over the decades, some of it as old as the 1930s.  

Gold was going to go mad before the winter even arrived.


	4. Days 27-28, March 4 & 5

Belle didn’t know if she’d ever be warm again after spending more than 10 days along the South Pole Traverse, jokingly called the South Pole Highway.  She’d done the SPOT1 and SPOT2 before, but SPOT3 was a different beast entirely.  Apart from being stuck at the pole for an extra week, the journey had been a windy, blustery affair.  They were slowed to a crawl on more than one occasion, with only the path flags to guide them.

Even with her face fully covered, Belle was pretty sure she had windburn in a couple of places.  

It was all she could do to get through her mandatory physical and pour a few mugs of hot, sugary tea down her throat, before catching Ariel for a last-minute farewell.

“OK, but seriously, you need to eat five pounds of fresh avocado, and sushi, and caprese salad with the biggest slices of tomato, and a whole bowl full of fresh pease, and--”

“Alright, alright!” giggled Ariel, hugging her again.  “I’ll eat my fruits and vegetables, but do you know what I’m most excited about?”

“Probably trying some new flavor of Oreo,” Belle joked in turn.

They carried on like that for some time, until it really was time for Ariel to take her seat on the caravan.

“You email me the second Gold gives you any grief, and I’m going to send you 101 ideas to get even with that grump,” the engineer promised.

“He can’t be that bad, surely.  We got off to a bit of a rough start, but…”

“But then you left for a few weeks, and the rest of us had to deal with him!  Seriously, Belle, he’s got something on Granny, because she just kept telling us to ignore him.  But I’ve got your back.  If you need to rig an exploding stink bomb full of itching powder, I’ll make the blueprints.”

They hugged again, and Ariel went out the twin storm doors.

“And you call me,” Belle shouted over the winds.  “The minute you get home, you call and leave me a voice mail so that I can wait anxiously for the communication uplink to give it to me.”

She could feel the chill of her tears on her cheeks before the doors closed again.

Before she could rub the redness from her eyes, a slightly accented, male voice called out to her.  “Miss French? Miss French! I need you in the lab, these machines are absolutely incomprehensible.  Well, what are you doing just standing there? I believe we agreed to a schedule.”

“Mr. Gold,” she said, inhaling sharply.  “I think it would be best if we started tomorrow, I’m--”

“Absolutely not! I’ve waited a month for this, and the night will soon be upon us.  I need to work, I need to--”

“And I need to rest!” Belle all but shouted at him.

Gold was hearing, but not listening, as she tried to explain that she’d be useless without sleep.  It had taken all of 40 days for the Traverse to navigate its way from McMurdo to the Pole.  Danforth, on the Southern side of the Queen Maud Mountain Pass, was significantly closer to the polar end than the coast, but even so, she’d been on the road for 7 days before arriving; she’d spent the rest of her time working with Anna, and then she’d been at the mercy of the winds, pulled to the various land-crews all in need of snow removal support from anyone who could manage it.  Topping that off with another 3 days on the road, the passage back North sped significantly by the absence of cargo, Belle was exhausted.  She felt frozen, and already missed her best friend.

Suddenly, amid the slow but inevitable landslide that had been forming since she left, Belle French decided to stop trying to hold it all back.  Stevie Nicks would be proud.

“I said that I can’t do it right now!”

Gold blinked.  He blinked again.

“I believe we agreed to be civil,” he sneered.  “And I am quite sure that I reminded you what unrestricted access would look like should you fail to meet your end of that bargain.   _ Now _ , Miss French.  I’ve been delayed long enough.”

Belle simply turned on her heel and marched away from him.  Food, shower, sleep.  It was all she wanted, and if she managed to get warm along the way, so much the better for her.

“Miss French! MISS FRENCH!”

His bellowing wasn’t going to do him any good.  Belle was so far overdue for her day off that it had passed “not even funny” and gone straight to “hysterical.”  As it was officially winter, they’d changed to a 2-day weekend cycle instead of 1, and Belle planned to hoard each and every hour.  Was it actually a Saturday?  She thought it might be, with added relish as she realized that meant at least half of the winter staff would be off today.  Her own insistence on healthy working hours wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.

“If you don’t turn around right now, I am going to make sure that you never work in this program again!” He was howling now.

It was surprisingly liberating not to care what another person wanted from you, Belle decided.  Mr. Gold must feel this way all the time.

In the Lake building, Belle shoveled 10 mouthfuls of something rich and hot into her mouth while Gold hovered like a storm cloud.  She would have liked to try for 11, but it just wasn’t going to happen.  She yawned, and decided to rest her head on the pillow of her arms for just a moment.  5 minutes, and then she would go back to her empty room and sleep in her own bed.

When she woke up, most of the chairs had been upturned onto the tables, and one of the remaining kitchen staff was in the process of dry-mopping.  There was still a pile of congealed pasta in cream sauce on a half-emptied plate in front of her, and Gold was sitting next to her, pouring over notes of some sort.

“You’re awake,” he observed.

“Not for long,” she yawned, checking her watch.  She’d been out for nearly an hour.  

Belle looked down, and realized she was still dressed mostly in her field gear.  “I’m going to wash up, eat some more, and get some actual sleep.”

“Yes,” Gold agreed.  “I… I can live with that. I didn’t…” He pinched the bridge of his nose.  “This is all new for me.  I’m… I need…”

“You need rest too, by the looks of it,” she surmised, stretching each joint as she rose to her feet.  

His face was pinched, thinner than when she’d first met him.  There were dark circles under his eyes, and the shoulder-length hair he sported hung a bit lank and greasy.

“Have you been sleeping?” asked Belle.

“A little,” he confessed. “Not much.  It’s strange, living in full daylight.”

“And did you eat while you were sitting here glaring at me, or did you just try to plow your way through a technical manual from the 1980s?”

Gold’s stomach gurgled in reply.

“Right,” Belle sighed.  “Right. So, at a guess, I’d say you’ve been running around like a mad man for the last 3 weeks, shouting at people, and generally trying to get everything done at once, hence accomplishing nothing.”

“Not  _ nothing _ ,” he defended.  “I’ve done… some things, more or less.”

Probably less, she thought.  

“Some of the equipment here is criminally out of date,” he accused.  “I thought this whole program was supposed to be well-funded, state-of-the-art.” 

“Yeah, well you can thank our good friends at Dark Castle for that,” Belle scoffed.  

“What’s wrong with Dark Castle?” asked Gold, a little defensive.

“Nothing is wrong with them, in terms of what they actually produce,” Belle allowed.  “By all accounts, their stuff is the best, but also most decidedly  _ theirs _ .  I think Dr. Mallory would be very happy if every program but hers went under and stayed that way.  Every time we’re close to getting a grant from the University to replace some of this stuff, Dark Castle comes in and throws more money at the Antarctic Research Program.  Except, of course, McMurdo decides how to spend the money, and it’s shockingly not out here.  Dark Castle has pretty skillfully managed to pad their own labs and budgets without really supporting anyone else. And what are we supposed to do after that? We keep going back to Miskatonic, or the federal research grants, but they see the influx of cash in the program from Dark Castle and decide we haven’t demonstrated sufficient need compared to, say, a project to dig a well in the Sudan.”

Belle eyed her cold plate, shrugged, and shoveled in another mouthful of the lumpy paste.  Better to eat it than waste it, and she was still hungry.

“That’s – don’t eat that!” he panicked, snatching Belle’s plate back from her.  “I have some food in my room.   You can come eat there, if you must.”

“Did you poison it?” she asked, only half joking. 

“I’ve got a pile of apples—“

“You’ve been hoarding freshies?  Look, you can’t do that, or someone might really try to kill you.  Down here, fresh food is just… I mean, I’ve seen firemen twice my size split an apple 20 ways just to avoid a fight.  Don’t do that anymore.  There won’t be anything fresh down here at all after the current supplies are gone, and people already think you’re some kind of… of…”

“Beast?” He quirked an eyebrow.  “They aren’t wrong.”

“You’re not a beast,” Belle told him.  “But you’re not popular.  Seriously, did you have a shouting match with every member of the summer staff while I was gone?  Even Ariel warned me off you, and she worked in Atwood!”

“What would you have me do?” he bristled.  “I am running out of time to get everything up and running here.  Do you think we’ll sit down for a day, set it all up, and it’ll all work perfectly? I estimated at least a month just to tweak the system and set up a base-line, and we’re closing in on 3 weeks without a successful test.  I need help.  I admit it, so help me.”

“Then I suggest you ask nicely instead of stamping your feet and losing your temper with everyone,” she chastised.  “We have jobs, Mr. Gold.  If you need something, from anyone, then you need to ask them as a favor; I assure you, we’ve all got other work that we need to do.”

“Except you,” he pointed out.  “Your job, if I’m not mistaken, is to—“

“My job is to support the lab,” she said, cutting him off from saying anything else to vex her.  “It’s to integrate the archives, ensuring that the data we gather is shared and stored in a meaningful way for others to use.  And – if the world is good – to finally get the Station lending-library off the ground.  You happen to be the only person using my facilities this winter, so I’m willing and able to help you more than I otherwise could.  But not if you can’t show me some basic respect and decency.”

Gold sighed, resting his head in his hands.  “I keep making it worse, don’t I?”

“Yes,” she answered frankly.  “But you’re new, and you’re learning.  And frankly, you’re not really the Antarctic type.  We’ll figure it out.”

“After you’ve rested,” he announced, pulling her plate further away from her.  “And you might as well come and help me eat my spite-fruit.  The damage is already done.”

Well, at least she’d made that much progress.

“I have a better idea,” Belle told him.  “Tomorrow, we can work on making you some friends.”

“Tomorrow, we should work on—“

“Tomorrow is the second day of my 2-day weekend,” interrupted Belle.  “So do you want me to do you a favor on my day off or not?”

He did, as it turned out.  Belle wasn’t above splitting a spite-apple with Gold (spite being her new favorite prefix in very short order), but she insisted that he leave the rest of his pile untouched.

“We’ll make a fun treat tomorrow, and that will go a long way toward making you some friends,” she told him.  Then she went back to her room, scrubbed up, and laid down.

Belle wasn’t properly warm until she woke up the next morning, smothered in blankets and wrapped up in two layers of thermals.

“Miss French?” Gold called from the hall, rapping on her door. “Miss French, it’s noon.”

“I’m up,” she mumbled, stumbling to her thickly-socked feet and tugging open the door.

Gold looked utterly bewildered, but Belle couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.  She was wearing a tight pair of blue, thermal leggings, a pair of green, wooly socks, and her favorite party-mix sweater. Then again, Gold was wearing his usual three-piece suit, with too many layers of cashmere wedged under the jacket for it to button.  But all that had still not prevented him from attempting to fasten his waistcoat.

“We have  _ got _ to get you something less black,” Belle decided.

Gold chose to ignore her.  

“I believe you spoke of some elaborate master plan to make friends?” He did not sound enthusiastic.

“Trust me, you’ll be thanking me two months from now,” Belle promised.

They spent their afternoon raiding Ariel’s leftover snack stash, predictably finding the peanut butter, chocolate, and caramels that Belle knew would be there.  Gold wasn’t much help, but Belle managed to slice the remaining apples into relatively similar pieces, rinsing each segment in a dilute solution of saltwater to stop it from browning.

They patted each piece dry, laying them like precious jewels on a sheet of paper, and –with the help of a coffee mug in the microwave – drizzled a tiny portion of chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter over each.

“Is all this really necessary?” Gold asked, when Belle began arranging the pieces on a purloined cafeteria tray.

“Yes.”  She emphasized that presentation was the whole point.

“This looks like a sticky mess,” he complained.  “And this plastic tray cheapens the whole assortment.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Next time I’ll use grand mum’s best silver,” said Belle, rolling her eyes.  “Trust me people will love this.”

Everyone on the winter crew had gathered to watch their customary marathon of John Carpenter’s  _ The Thing _ , and Belle found them crowded into one of the warmer rooms of the Atwood building, projecting the film onto a whiteboard.

“We brought snacks!” she announced, easing Gold toward the assembly.

“Yes,” Gold deadpanned.  “Snacks.”

His reception was cool, but candied applies proved too great a temptation to refuse, and before long, Gold had been accepted – and even thanked – by a few of the people he’d be relying on until summer.

“Sit down and watch,” Belle whispered, when Gold looked like he was about to leave.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” he whispered back, but did take the seat next to hers.

“Kurt Russell is about to threaten to blow up the base,” Belle explained.  “They have to destroy the Thing, but the Thing is really hiding in Charles Hallahan.  Oh—watch!”

“This is set in Antarctica?”

“Yes,” she whispered back.  “Now sit down and settle in, we’re getting to the good part.”

A few minutes later, he whispered: “The soundtrack is terrible.”

Belle giggled.  “It is, but we always watch  _ The Thing _ and  _ The Shining _ on the first weekend of winter.  So shush!”

Whatever else he may have been thinking, Gold did stay for the whole movie, and even agreed to watch  _ The Shining _ .

“This is nightmare fuel,” he complained, as Jack Nicholson took an axe to the door.

Belle just rolled her eyes.  It was a bad joke, born in the darkest of humors, but the paranoia, isolation, and fear of their annual horror movie marathon served its purpose.  Maybe the Thing wasn’t real, but the dangers of being cooped up for too long were, and if they didn’t laugh and bond over it, there was every chance that someone would do something regrettable.  

Usually, that just looked like an ill-advised jaunt into the outdoors, and at worst they got a bit of frostbite.  But at worst, people had been known to turn on one another.  It’s what happened to the lost Lake Expedition, Miskatonic University’s first foray into the continent.  Versions differed of course, but it was generally agreed that most of them met violent ends, and as there was nothing else endemic to the continent that could have done it, most historians agreed that they’d suffered a sort of hypothermic madness.

When the movies ended, everyone wandered towards dinner – the kitchen staff included.  Supper would be a relatively simple affair tonight.

“So sit down and tell us about this telescope, Gold,” said a member of the maintenance crew.  “The ARM Tower is supposed to have anti-icing measures, but they always go out when we get a really big storm.  Maybe we can rig something up inside, with the generators, as a sort of a back-up.”

And just like that, he was making progress with his work.  The look he shot Belle was one of total disbelief, but once he started talking about something he was comfortable with, the conversation flowed.

“That’s pretty impressive, mate,” said Will, one of the electricians who’d been drawn in by the prospect of keeping the observatory dome free of ice all winter.  “You’ll have to do a walk-through some night when the skies are clear. I’d love to look at Saturn.”

“My project is not—“ started Gold.

“Saturn is probably not going to be visible,” Belle said, saving him from himself.  “But I think we can see Jupiter and his moons in a few more weeks.”

Gold glowered, but the matter was settled, and he eventually accepted that a few hours of show-and-tell would be well worth the price of getting the full use of his equipment all winter.  Belle agreed to meet him the next day, around 18:00 hours, to begin.  With luck, they’d be calibrated and ready for  a test run by the time twilight hit around midnight.


	5. Day 32, March 8

“Miss French, if you’re not going to solve this problem, then what is the point of you?” Gold snarled, slamming a three-ring binder onto the table.  

He’d made his adjustments to the ARM hardware, but convincing the prehistoric positioning equipment to work with his cutting-edge Dark Castle locators was presenting the greater challenge, by far.

“Lose the tone or lose some teeth Gold,” Belle bit back, stretching further into the ancient cabinet, toward the faulty cable.

It was not going well.  Gold could see, plainly, where he’d gone wrong: and it was in settling for second best.  Danforth was grossly insufficient for his needs, and he should never have allowed his demands on the South Pole Telescope to be denied.  

He was going to de-fund the entire program when he got home.

“Hold on, I think I found the problem!” Belle called, her voice muffled by the greenish-brown plastic shell of an outdated computer.  “Try it now.”

Annoyed, Ainsley flicked on the monitor – a top of the line Dark Castle display, completely irrelevant for all its sophistication – and to his absolute delight saw his program running in the background.

“It’s there,” he said dumbfounded.

“We did it!” Belle cheered, wrapping him into a dusty hug.

Gold froze.

“I, um, well… yes.  Yes, good.  Good thing,” he sputtered.


	6. Day 45, March 25

Truly, there was nothing better than a weekend. Rolling over, Belle decided to sleep in – blissfully warm and finally able to indulge, now that Gold’s equipment was functioning more or less as expected.

They lived in perpetual twilight now, though it still never reached full darkness.  And it wouldn’t, not for another month and a half.  From May through August, Belle had resigned herself to being on-call for Gold, and she’d deal with that when it came.  But for now, she had nothing more to do than stay warm and toasty.

A knock on her door interrupted her reverie.

“Miss French?”

“Ms. French,” Belle muttered.  She’d long since given up any hopes of him using the Ms.  Anyway, Miss wasn’t incorrect, but it wasn’t what she preferred.

“What is it, Gold?” she called, rolling out of bed and tugging on a pair of jeans.

“The data-feed from the South Pole Telescope just cut out.” He at least had the decency to sound sheepish, though Belle very much feared it was all in her imagination, fueled by the gentle muffling of his voice through her door.

“I told you it was possible.  McMurdo weather advised that we might see a Category 2 storm.”

“I know, but – this is stupid. Can I come in?”

Belle groaned.  She twisted her hair up, into a messy bun, and pinned it there with a pair of pencils.  She eased open the door.

“It is my day off, you know,” she said, face to face.

“I know,” he nodded, swallowing hard.  “Mine too. You spend yours watching idiotic films and eating popcorn, I spend mine refining my methods and pouring over reports.”

“So I suppose what you need, then, is a favor?” Belle teased, bending down to tug on her boots.  She had already made up her mind to go, but it never hurt to remind Gold to ask nicely.

He cleared his throat.  “A deal, actually.” 

Belle raised one eyebrow in response.

“Whatever you’re being paid here, I’ll double it,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Excuse me?”

“I need more support,” he clarified.  “And as you so rightly pointed out, you need to be in a condition to perform your duties.  Ergo, it behooves me to redefine those parameters to better favor me.  Quit, effective immediately.  It’s not like they can send you home before spring.  I’ll re-hire you through my own research funds, and you can work for me, full-time.  I can even get you a position back in the States once this is over, or anywhere else that you please.”

Belle slammed the door on him.


	7. Day 48, March 28

“You don’t want to quit your job. Fine.  It was stupid of me to ask.  But can you please just talk to me?”

Belle merely shoved a pile of reports at him, the mountains of data made readable through her own expertise.  The analysis she provided saved him so much time, but it meant less without their customary dissection over tea.

Ainsley sighed, and started thumbing through the pages.

“We’re close, you know,” he tried.  Maybe she’d be persuaded back to the project if a breakthrough seemed likely.  “The theory is sound, in principle, and the readouts are accurate within acceptable parameters.  The South Pole Telescope corroborates that, which means we have a valid control.  If we keep narrowing the field of likely clusters, we’ll be very close to proving or disproving the hypothesis in April.”

Belle had definitely heard him, and her usual serenity cracked a bit around the edges.  But not in his favor. She was  _ fuming _ mad.

“ _ We _ aren’t close to anything,” she snapped.  “ _ You _ are close, and it’s none of my business if you succeed or not.  And no amount of money is going to change that, I promise.”

“Is that what you’re mad about?” Gold gaped.  “You think I tried to bribe you to doctor the output?” 

“I’m mad,” Belle snarled, “because you have no respect for me, my job, or my time beyond what I can do for you.  I’m livid that you think so little of me, and I’m horrified at who else you’ve paid off over your life.  Whatever grant you got here on, there must have been a hundred other people who deserved it more than you. You’re unfit to be here, or around people in general, and I’m done with being nice to you.  All you ever do is make demands and discount what we’re trying to do here!”

“That’s not true!” he pleaded. “Belle, of course I value you! You’re worth five times as much as I offered you, you’re invaluable.  But you were so angry… I didn’t think you wanted more money— if the number was too low, I’ll--“

“I DON’T WANT YOUR MONEY!”

“Then what do you want!?”

“An apology, for a start,” she cried.  “Danforth is so much bigger than the Baelfire project, and you think I’d just walk away from my responsibilities? That I’d intentionally do a bad job, just to show partiality to you?  You have no idea what a huge privilege it is to even get the chance to work here, you just stomp in and throw your funding around like it’s monopoly money.”

“I…  Belle, I’m sorry,” he breathed.  “I’m sorry.  But I need your help, and I—“

“Stop,” she groaned. “Just say you’re sorry and stop talking.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.  “Will you forgive me now?”

“Oh my God, you are just incapable of shutting your mouth,” she muttered to herself.

“I’m sorry!” he said for the third time.

“I heard you! Now shut up and give me time to cool down.”


	8. Day 58, April 7

“It’s not funny,” Gold grimaced, rubbing at the spot on his face.

“It is,” Belle giggled.  “It’s a scientific fact that putting black graphite on an astronomer’s eyepiece is the best prank of all time.  April Fool’s!”

“April first was a week ago,” he whined.

Belle didn’t care.  He’d had it coming, and she needed something to laugh about.  They’d patched things up, but it was still tense in the lab, and nobody above the age of 7 had ever fallen for that one before.  Ariel would be thrilled.

“So we were overdue,” snorted Belle, fighting to remain prim.

“It’s not funny,” he insisted again, but she could see him cracking.  He was about two millimeters away from an honest-to-goodness smile.  

And anyway – she’d only done it to a tertiary piece of equipment that they used to satisfy their mutual curiosity.  The ARM telescope, complete with Gold’s experimental filter, was positioned completely by automated lifts and sophisticated software.  But like clockwork, every morning, he’d crack open her office window and position that old-school tripod, bringing Jupiter into focus for while he sipped from a chipped mug full of stewed tea.  

“Oi, mate, what’s that on yer face?” asked Will, who’d been helping them with the anti-icing all morning.  

Neither of them could hold back any more, and they both dissolved into fits of laughter.


	9. Day 75, April 24

“Mr. Gold? Mr. Gold!” called Belle, knocking at the only door on base without any personal decorations or identifying markers, beyond the customary nameplate.

“S’late,” grumbled a tired voice from inside.  “G’way.”

“Ainsley, get up,” Belle insisted.  They’d had a long night, one of their first exposures to true darkness so far, but there was something that he absolutely needed to see.

“Tired,” he moaned, but she could hear him thumping around behind the door.

Belle decided to be brave, and tried the knob.  It wasn’t locked, so she cracked it open.

“Wha’ dae ye wan’?” he mumbled.  He was trying to tug another sweater on, but had his head through an arm hole.

Belle couldn’t help but appreciate how much thicker his accent became when she caught him like this.

“First aurora of the year,” she grinned.  “You’ve got to come and see, everyone’s getting together.”

Gold rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and Belle caught his free hand before he could grump another excuse at her. 

“Come on,” she cooed, tugging him toward the largest window in the lobby. 

A few brave souls had suited up and gone outside to experience the full magnitude of the Southern Lights, but Belle knew Gold well enough to realize he wouldn’t willingly follow her out doors.  Danforth only had about 20 staff to see them through winter, mostly kitchen, maintenance, and safety teams.  Will made a space for them by the window, always good-natured and ready for a laugh, and Belle pointed toward the horizon.

The entire sky was a dancing ribbon of green, warming to tones of pink.  The stars peeked through from deep, purple twilight and the pale clouds of the Milky Way washed over it all like a wave. 

“It’s beautiful,” Belle exhaled.  She dared a look up at Ainsley, who was only a few inches taller than her, but oh – what a difference those few inches made when she was stuck wearing sensible shoes.  Through the veil of her lashes, she could see him glancing down at her.

“Yes,” answered Gold, squeezing the hand she forgot he was holding.  “Tis.”


	10. Day 91, May 10

“Belle, this is madness. I won’t let you – you can’t!” pleaded Ainsley, tugging his over-sized boots on as Belle did likewise.

“It’s not negotiable,” replied Belle, double checking that her cold weather gear was all secure.

“Surely one of the others can—“

“They can’t be spared,” she said plainly.  “It’s me or it’s no-one.”

This was madness. She was going to kill herself out there.  Grown men, with over 100 pounds of muscle on her, knew better than to run out into the onset of a Category 5 storm.  Communications were already down between Danforth and the Pole, and the next to fall would probably be between them and McMurdo.  What if something happened? How could he ever go on without her?

“I don’t need the telescope,” Gold begged.  “It’s not important.  We can try again next year—“

“Ainsley,” Belle demanded, grasping his face between thick gloves.  “I need you to calm down.  This is my job, and I’m not doing it just for you.  I need to de-ice that lock, or this storm is going to fill the entire ARM Tower with snow.  Apart from being bloody inconvenient, it could very well destroy the whole operation, which – I’ll remind you – affects more than just this one project.  It’s going to be fine.  I just need you to stay in here and keep an eye on me, in case.”

“In case  _ what _ ?” He was horrified.  “It’s not safe, or there wouldn’t be an  _ in case _ , Belle.  I absolutely forbid it.”

She gave him a soft peck on the cheek before pulling her face mask and goggles on. 

“It’ll be fine,” she promised.  “Stay on the radio and be ready to engage the locks on my signal, OK?”

The term tower was, perhaps, an overstatement of the small building and weather-sealed dome that stood, at most, 10 feet off the ground.  It was less of a wind hazard that way, and it wasn’t as though they were competing with taller structures for a clear view.  She’d go up the service ladder, pick loose the ice, and give him the signal.  It all seemed very reasonable, laid out like that.

What those steps failed to account for were the growing wind speeds and blasts of loose snow, like sandpaper, forcing their way into every crevice.

During his first storm, he’d seen the dormitory lobby filled with drifting powder – the set of double storm doors preventing it from reaching the main halls.

Ainsley picked up his radio and continued to tug at his ugly, orange outerwear.  He could push a button with all this on.  That didn’t worry him.

But if Belle needed help, he needed to be ready to go, and that worry was going to drive him mad.

“I’m up the tower,” said her static-riddled voice over the handset.  “I’m harnessed in and getting ready to work.  Are you ready?”

“Ready,” he radioed back.

For five terrible minutes, he heard nothing. 

Then: “Engage the locks.”

He did, but the warning light on the display showed the seal was still compromised.

“Did it work?” Belle asked.

He wanted to lie.  Dammit all, but he wanted to tell her everything was fine.  He could disconnect the cable, blame the storm, and she’d come back inside.

“Ainsley, is it closed?” Belle radioed again.

“No,” he answered.

“Disengage the locks and we’ll try again,” instructed Belle.  

He did.

Then, the terrible silence returned again.  All he could hear was the wind, pressing every advantage against the absurdly feeble man-made structures.

“I think I see the problem,” said Belle, after far too long.  “There was ice in one of the sensors.  Try now.”

Gold entered the command, and breathed a sigh of relief to any God listening.

“It’s sealed,” he announced.  “Come back inside.”

“My harness is stuck,” she responded after entirely too long.  “I need to cut myself free, but I can’t reach my knife with these gloves.”

“I’m coming,” Gold replied, not even waiting to hear what else she had to say.  “Do not take those gloves off, Belle.”

He took out his knife and released the blade.

Gold charged toward the exit, pushing his way through the drifts already forming between the doors.  The coldness hit him like a leech.  Every ounce of strength fled his limbs, and he struggled to breathe.  Twenty feet away, Belle was fumbling to reach the safety knife on her belt.

It might as well have been twenty miles, but Gold doubted that even a marathon would be so draining.  He leaned into the wind and he pushed.   After maybe three minutes, he reached the ladder, climbing up behind Belle.

“I’ve got you,” he vowed.  “I’ve got you.  It’ll be fine now.”

With a final push, the blade severed her safety rope, and the two of them affected a slow, shuddering climb back down the ladder.  Visibility was already low.

“This way,” said Belle when Gold tried to lead her back toward the doors.  “That way’s away from base.”

He was a failure.  An absolute waste, because left to his own devices, he’d have cut Belle loose only to lead her into death.  She was a miracle, really.  The way she knew just what to do to get along down here completely amazed him.

Together, they stumbled into the Dyer Building.  It was suddenly very dark around him.

“Ainsley? Ainsley?” called Belle from far, far away. “Ainsley, we need to get you warm again.”

And suddenly his clothes were coming off, and Belle’s were as well.  He breathed deeply, the sweet perfume of cheap soap and snow.


	11. Day 92, May 11

“Wha’ hap’nd?” murmured Gold, nestling into her hair.  They’d been like that for hours, Belle unwilling to leave him to sleep it off alone.

Fatigue, the medics said.  Nothing physically wrong with him, but the shock to his system from going outside had brought all the stress and exhaustion crashing down. He’d sleep it off.

Realistically, though, Dr. Whale didn’t have the space or resources to provide round-the-clock care to anyone who wasn’t in imminent peril – and they already had two other cases of mild frostbite receiving treatment in the ward.

Belle had asked Will to help her bring Gold back to his rooms, and – finding those locked – had brought him to hers instead.  She’d dressed him in a pair of flannel pants, thick socks, and her favorite sweater.  After wrapping herself into a dry set of thermals, Belle had crawled into bed beside him without even a second thought.

“You collapsed,” she answered, relaxing back into the warmth of him.  It was the warmest she’d been in months.

“Where am I?”

“My room.”  That confession brought a slight blush. “You needed to rest.  I figured the added warmth would help.”

Gold pulled her close, and for the first time Belle was confident that she hadn’t been imagining the swell of his cock against her backside.

“’S a grae’ wee drim,” he mumbled, bucking his hips against her. 

The arm running under the hollow of her neck wrapped around her collar bones, and Gold’s hand lazily fondled her nipples. His other trailed down her hips, cupping her sex against his palm.

“Th’ bes’ drim,” he whispered, rendering her immediately wet.

“It’s not a dream,” panted Belle.  She wished like hell she’d worn a pair of men’s long underwear.  At least they opened in the front, where she might find some relief.  

He was grinding his own hips into her arse, the full length of him encased in flannel.  She moaned in encouragement when he reached between her legs and hoisted her back into closer proximity with him.  This new closeness allowed Belle to bring herself off against his hand, all the while meeting him bump for thrust.

Belle knew her wetness has soaked through to his palm when she heard Gold growl, and felt him begin to suckle at her neck.  Both of his hands rose to the level of her breasts, and he tugged at her nipples even as his teeth scraped over her shoulder.

“Sweetheart please, please can I have you?” he begged.  One hand dipped down, under her shirt, and then teased at the band of her pants.

“That depends,” she purred. “Are you still dreaming?”

“I must be,” Gold answered, rolling her under him.  His eyes were open, their honey brown irises all but eclipsed by the darkness of his pupil. 

“The Belle French I know would never let a selfish arse like me fuck her silly,” he continued.  For all his filthy talk and the comfortable weight of his chest against hers, his ministrations had stopped.  

“Is this alright, love?” he whispered, lips teasing the shell of her ear as though his desire was the best secret in the world.

“More than,” laughed Belle, wrapping her thighs around his hips and bringing his cock into contact with her labia.  They were still both fully dressed.

“Condoms?” asked Gold, indulging in a few long, slow strokes against her core.

“Implant,” Belle answered. “Are you clean? I am.”

“Aye,” he laughed.  “They aren’t exactly lining up for me.”

“We should still get some condoms from medical for next time; to be doubly sure there’s no accident.”  Her voice warbled as Gold slid off her sweater, exposing her breasts to the cool air.

“Beautiful,” he breathed.   

He kissed each peak in turn, teasing each with the edge of his crooked teeth.  They would never be lovely, his teeth, with their natural overlap and gold fills.  But Belle had never minded them the way her friends back in Maine might have done, and she’d never find them anything but sexy after he nipped and nibbled her near to melting.

“In me,” begged Belle, kissing her way down his chest to return the favor.  She worked the sweater over his head, mussing his shoulder-length, graying hair in the process.

She slipped a hand between them and grasped him firmly at the root.

“Fuck—Belle,” he gasped.

Gold obliged by tugging down his flannel pants, and Belle helped herself by scrambling out of her thermals.  Completely naked and panting under the covers, they cool air of the room didn’t bother her a bit.

“In me, now. Please, Ainsley.”

He didn’t need to be asked a third time.  Gold hitched one of Belle’s legs over his shoulder and buried himself to the hilt.  She could feel the faintest brush against her cervix, where the crown of his uncircumcised cock threatened to utterly overwhelm her.

His hand reached down between them, and with a few merciless flicks Belle was in spasms around him.

“It feels so good…” he grunted, punctuating each syllable with a thrust, “…to fuck you while you come.”

She was beyond words, beyond reciprocation, and Ainsley seemed intent on keeping it that way.

“Dae ye e’en ken how good ye feel?” he continued, a litany of filth wrapped in a thickening accent.  “It’s like tha’ greedy  li’l cunt is suckin’ my cock, beggin’ me nae ta stop.”

“Don’t stop!” Belle shouted, cresting again.  

She was soaking wet, and whatever bit of restraint Gold had fled.  He pulled her other leg over his shoulder and grasped her hips in rough hands, pinning her to the mattress.  Belle brought her own hands up to his neck, drawing him into a kiss as he pounded feverishly into her.

“Fuck,” gasped Gold as their tongues dueled for dominance.  Belle came again, still trembling from the last one.

His thrusts slowed, and his cock slipped from inside her.

“Give me a minute, sweetheart,” he panted, struggling to compose himself. 

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, arching up off the bed to rub against him.

“As greedy as all that?” he joked.  

“What is it?” she asked again, real concern starting to form.

“It’s nothing.  I just cannae spill myself after five minutes like a damn boy in a rut.  Oh, but you could tempt the devil himself.  Give it a moment, and I’ll make it so good for you, sweetheart.  So good.”

“It is good,” mewed Belle, continuing to seek her own pleasure against the edge of his shaft. “Very good.  And we can take our time later.  But right now, I think I’d like to be fucked silly by a selfish arse.”

He edged himself against her, knotting one fist into her hair.

“If I’m a selfish arse, then what does that make you?”

“A greedy slut,” she admitted, rubbing herself against him again.  She nearly had his tip at her entrance again.

“No, nae tha’,” he said, grip and face softening.  “More like a brave, ravenous slut who tamed the beast, and trained him tae suit her needs.”

A silly grin spread over Belle’s face.  “My beast had better keep up then,” she teased, “Because this slut is ready to be fucked.”

Without preamble, she rolled over and rose to her knees.  He mounted her from behind, hand back in her hair, drawing her neck within reach of his teeth.  They didn’t last long, both spent within minutes, and collapsed into the damp sheets.

“You saved me, you know,” Belle whispered as he cradled her against his chest.

She could feel his lips smiling against the crown of her head.  “You saved me first.”


	12. Day 103, May  20

“Dammit,” cursed Gold.  He was running out of primary locations to scan, and so far the Baelfire Effect remained undocumented.  “Nothing.   _Again.”_

“Well some of these secondary targets still look promising,” said Belle. “It’s not over until it’s over, as they say.”

But was over, or would be.  His prime observational window was closing, and the twilight hours would be returning, washing out his skies.  Soon enough, around the middle of September, the sun would rise.

“The polymer works,” he sighed, resting his head heavily in his hands. “And so does the software.  I can observe new details in other stars, which basically corroborates what we already knew about their chemical composition.  It’s good data, in a lightweight and relatively cost-effective composition, it’s just not…”

“It’s not Baelfire,” she surmised, all sympathy.

Belle leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on the back of his neck.

“You’re too good for me,” he muttered, taking Belle by the hand and pressing a kiss to the back of her knuckles.

They’d settled into an easy relationship, with her remaining mostly in control in the lab and him often taking the lead in private. His research was still his own, of course, but that warm, accepting presence made the misery of Antarctic winter fractionally easier to bear.

“I know I’m missing something obvious, but I just can’t think… It’s just beyond the edge of what we can see.”

Belle settled into his lap, and Gold sat up straighter.  This was not a place where she regularly showed him this sort of affection, preferring to keep up appearances and drawing a more conservative line between personal and work time.

“Just remember that this place drains you. Makes you forgetful. We’ll gather as much data as we can, and you’ll have as much time as you need to go over it later, ok?”  She finished her sentence by pressing a kiss to the scruff of his jaw.

Gold braved rejection, and slid a hand into her sweater.

“What do you think?” whispered Gold.  “Is my greedy slut ready to give a selfish arse a conciliatory fuck in her office?”

Belle squirmed, rubbing herself against the growing bulge in his trousers.

Gold could feel his pulse quicken, this amazing woman wet and willing in his arms.  He’d never had this before, not in this way.  His other lovers would dare anything, if they thought it would please him, but none had ever dared just to please herself.

That, alone, might not have been saying much to distinguish Miss French as a lover.  She could be quite generous and skillful when she wanted, as could he.  But the knowledge that she could have any man in the base -- any man on the continent, probably -- and had chosen him… that she could fuck herself to completion over and over on his cock, and he got to see her come undone… that, truly, was one of Gold’s proudest accomplishments.

She wanted him.  She’d looked around, got to know him (bastard that he was), and she still shared herself with him -- taking genuine pleasure in the coupling.

It defied explanation.

“We could have a suck-off,” he purred, “between that hungry cunt and your scrumptious mouth.  I’m sure we’ll need to take multiple readings, it could take all night.”

“Mm, some other time,” she giggled, kissing him deeply, and speaking in that secret, lacivious voice that she saved just for him.  “Right now, this greedy slut wants a selfish arse to eat her out until the shift ends.”

Gold was happy to oblige.


	13. Day 134, June 19

“Sorry, what was I doing?” asked Will for the third time that day.

“Grounding the wires for the server room,” Belle repeated.  She’d had to write it down, after the first time he’d asked and she couldn’t recall either.  There had been a bit of ice damage during the last storm.

“Right,” he said.  “Right, of course.  You couldn’t bring us a cup of tea, could ya?  Only it’s dragging a bit today.”

“No problem,” said Belle, leaving to fetch him a mug.

“You’ve been busy,” Gold observed as she entered the office.  He was bent over his notes again, Baelfire still stubbornly absent from his findings.

“Hm?” asked Belle, flipping the kettle on.  She selected two mugs on auto-pilot and plopped a tea bag into each.

“You. You’ve been busy.  With  _ Will _ ,” he grumbled.

“He’s fixing the wiring,” she huffed.  “It’s his job.  Remember jobs?  Those things we lesser mortals do for a living?”

Gold ignored her, in a snit.  Well, he’d have to get over it soon enough.  Being jealous of Will Scarlet, of all people, was an exercise in futility.  Apart from the fact that Will was as good as married to a girl back home, he wasn’t remotely Belle’s type.

When the kettle boiled, Belle poured two mugs and left Gold to his own devices.  Will was making progress, for once, and she didn’t want to chance an interruption.  So Belle passed him his mug and wandered back toward the office.  Maybe Gold would be in a better mood if she offered him a cup; they’d been at each other’s throats all week.

She needn’t have bothered.  Gold had thrown his documents to the ground and was near-to frothing when she returned.

“Where is it, Belle?” he spat.

“Where’s what?”  She was running out of patience for his tantrums.

“My cup.  My chipped cup.  It was here and then it wasn’t.  Did you make  _ Will  _ tea in my cup?”

“Oh, for the love of… Yes, I suppose I did.  He wanted tea, I brought him tea.  I’m sorry, it was probably the closest mug to the kettle.”

Ainsley, apparently beyond words, made a gesture as though she ought to treat this confession as evidence in some sort of case against her character.

“It’s a cup,” said Belle.  “I’m sorry, I’ll wash it out when he’s done.”

“This is--”

“If you say unacceptable, I’m going to kick you out of my office,” she interjected.  “What’s all this mess you’ve made anyway?”

Belle reached down to start picking up papers, surprised when she saw a series of specifications and readings that had nothing to do with telescopes.  Radiation-Visibility Lens for Drone and Sniper -- Dark Castle Technologies, Patent Pending.

“What the hell is this, Gold?” Belle snarled, enraged beyond belief.  “It’s sure as hell not Baelfire, so what is it?”

“What does it look like?” shouted the bastard.  “Our window to find Baelfire is closing.  The technology is good, albeit in a more limited capacity.  Shouldn’t I market it for what it can do, instead of driving myself insane over what it can’t?”

“These are weapons schematics,” gasped Belle, appalled.  “You’ve been testing military-grade weapons in my lab! I’m going to be sick…”

“Oh, please,” he scoffed.  “Don’t pull that little-miss innocent act with me.  You forget, I’ve seen you beg for a cock on your knees.”

Belle didn’t think, she just reacted.  In a flash, she’d crossed the room and slapped him.

“Get out of my office, and get your things out of my room.  You can work in the lab from now on, and you can contact Mrs. Lucas if you need anything.  My shift just switched, indefinitely, to the hours when yours isn’t.”


	14. Day 145, June 30

Gold was out of Scotch, and that was going to be a problem.  Belle wouldn’t speak to him.  Wouldn’t meet with him.  Wouldn’t even acknowledge that he was alive.  It was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the morning, pouring over data and programming the ARM to look at his tertiary coordinates.

He grew uncomfortably angry with her at the most inopportune moments.  How dare she look down on him after what she’d done? She gave him hope, and then started flirting with another man.  He’d never be enough for anybody, Gold knew that, but did she have to do it in front of him?  He could have lived in happy ignorance, at least for a little while.  It had extended the life of his first marriage by at least 3 years.

Then, in a flash, he’d throw himself full-speed into the military applications, and the pain would give way to dollar signs.

It was a vicious cycle, made moreso by judicious application of alcohol, and once he’d consumed his own stash, he’d gone around buying up whatever could be spared.  He was reduced to waiting for the last drop of a bottle of Dewar’s to pass his lips.

A loud thump at his door interrupted his sorrow, and the door pushed open without any invitation to enter.

“Gold, this has to end,” said Virginia Lucas. “Whatever this soggy, mopey, anti-social bullshit is, get over it.  You’re becoming a risk to this station’s safety.”

“Belle left me,” he cried softly.  “She left.”

“Then you and Miss French can damn well sit down and solve this tonight, because I am not -- repeat NOT -- going to tolerate this kind of behavior out of either of you any longer.  Belle? Get your ass in here.”

A sulky and tight-lipped Miss French stepped stiffly into the room.  She looked well, at least.  Her hair was always in long, chestnut curls, but although she’d taken to wearing it up of late, it at least looked better kempt than his own. But though her frame was always petite, Gold thought he could see her usually tight leggings hanging a little more loosely.  He hoped she hadn’t been losing weight -- but if she had, he’d found it again.  Even minus one of his sweaters, Gold’s waistcoat still wouldn’t button.

“Now then, you two are going to talk out whatever is going on between you, and tomorrow Danforth is going to be a sane place to work again.  You got it?”

“Yes,” sighed Belle, throwing herself down on the vacant bed opposite Gold’s.

Mrs. Lucas nodded decisively and left.

“Well that’s us told,” Belle muttered.  “Let’s just agree to do our jobs and move on.  The sun will be up in a couple of weeks, and then it’s just another month until Winfly.  Surely we can survive another 70-odd days.”

“I don’t want to survive,” he confessed.  “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.  But I can’t trust you,” sighed the blue-eyed beauty.  “You lied to me about what we were doing, you had me testing weapons… God, and you didn’t even care!”

“You were leaving me!” cried Gold.  “You were leaving me for Will, and my research was going nowhere.  What was I supposed to do?  I needed to start preparing for the increasingly likely conclusion that I’m never going to find Baelfire, and I’m never going to see you again!”

“There was nothing between me and Will! I must have told you that at least a dozen times, but you were just… impossible! Angry and irritable, and _lying_ to me,” Belle accused.  She wasn’t wrong.

“I… I was an arse, OK? I was wrong about Will, and wrong not to trust you,” Gold said.  “But come on, Belle, you must know where half of the research done down here ends up?”

“I do know!” she spat.  “And it’s terrible.  It’s bad enough that everyone wants to suppress the message of climate change, but I live down here. I’ve seen the ice shelves melt.  And here you are, with tens of thousands of dollars pointed at the stars, and you want to sell rifle scopes radiation-vision drones to the Department of Defense.  You’re giving up on Baelfire, just like that, and taking the easy path.”

“I will never give up on Baelfire,” he vowed. “Never. I know it’s out there, and I know we can observe it if only we can develop the tools.  But I still have to do my job, Belle, and my job is to make sure this project serves a purpose.”

“That’s not science, Ainsley, that’s capitalism!”

“Well then I am a capitalist!  That’s me, Ainsley Gold.  CEO of Dark Castle.  Is that what you wanted to hear, out on sabbatical and following some Quixotic quest to find a theoretical energy signal? Did you already know, or is this just one more accusation for you to turn against me?”

“I.. I didn’t know,” said Belle, wiping the tears from her cheeks.  “I didn’t know any of that.  I just knew that I loved you, and you lied to me.  You’re still lying.”

“I’m telling the truth now,” he breathed.  “And I love you too.  I always will, Belle. You are… everything, to me.  The only light in the darkness.  I wouldn’t have made it a month down here without you, but I don’t know how to make this right, and you won’t let me try.”

“I’m not sure I know how to forgive you,” Belle told him.   “I think I want to, but I just can’t see how.”

Gold shoved a binder toward her.  “Will you look at that, at least? Please?”

Belle obliged him, and began leafing through the pages.

“It’s… safety goggles?” she asked.

“For nuclear energy and waste treatment facilities,” confirmed Gold.  “Nuclear power isn’t clean power, but--”

“But it’s close,” she acknowledged.  “And being able to see high concentrations or leaks without relying on a geiger meter would be a very compelling case to improve plant safety and prevent meltdowns.”

“The polymer can do it,” he said. “With a low charge passed through the substrate, it can highlight radiation from a distance, and the software can analyze the risk more efficiently.”

“No sniper rifles?” she quizzed.

“Never,” he promised.  “I can’t change who I am or what I do, Belle, but I can change this.  This one thing.  For you.”

She gifted him with a watery half-smile, and the sun rose for him again.

“It’s a start,” she agreed.  

A start was enough.


	15. Day 228, September 21

“Here it comes,” whispered Belle, squeezing Gold’s hand through their gloves.  

She knew he hated the cold.  Loathed it, in fact.  But he’d bundled up without her asking, and had invited her outside to see the sun come up for the first time.  Their lives, in perpetual twilight, had only improved since Granny forced them to talk.  Not that Ainsley would ever admit it.  Not that she needed him to.

It was nearly 5 AM, and this would be the first, true daylight they’d seen since March.

“Was it worth it?” she asked, suddenly more curious about him than she was the horizon.  “I mean, we never did find Baelfire.”

“There will be other chances,” Gold replied.  “New developments, better technology.  I won’t stop looking.  But if you’re asking me if all of this -- you and me and this frigid wasteland -- were worth it… Belle, it was worth every minute.”

“Good.  Me too, I mean.”

The skies were flush and bloody, the low clouds illuminated and golden.

“You know, I was thinking,” he said, “that since you’re due for a little R&R off the ice, maybe you could come back with me? To Maine?”

“I… I don’t know,” Belle answered honestly.  Her heart thundered in her chest.  “I want to, truly.  I'd be there regardless to see my Dad, but actually living with you... And I don’t know what’s next for me, and I don’t know if that’s fair to you.  What if I want to come back?”

“I can work from anywhere,” he shrugged.  “But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t prefer Maine.  There’s a library there.  You could… if you wanted, you could run things.  And maybe set up a fund to build that lending library at Danforth you were always talking about.”

“I could do a young reader’s program about the importance of the ice caps,” suggested Belle.

“You can do anything, maybe change hemispheres for a while.  Maine isn't so terribly far from the Hudson Bay, at least not compared to Antarctica.  Honestly, Belle, I’ll support you however I can.  I just want to have you in my life.”

Belle dared a kiss, despite the cold.  “Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Belle smiled. “Let’s go to Maine.”

Fin.


End file.
